David’s Diary – Hyundai Nationals Review

What a weekend.

The 2017 Federal Tyres Hyundai Australian Championships had a bit of everything! From our MTAQ Racing perspective, I am very happy to report that we achieved our goal of a Top ten finish in the Championship race!  ( albeit coming from a long way back to do it.)

The entire team has worked so hard, and now to entrench ourselves in the top bracket of Excel racers in the country (in only our 4th race meeting) is tremendous.

The weekend wasn’t without it’s challenges, but in true MTAQ Racing style, we overcame and delivered when it counted.

Friday practice went fairly well, aside from a small clip coming off the gearbox linkage, which after a quick trip to the local repco, we were able to sort out. The car was fairly quick straight up, and we ran around in practice with a number of cars that would feature in the battle for the lead on Sunday. We were at the track very late on Friday night fettling and double checking, so going into Qualifying Saturday morning, I felt we were in good shape.

Qualfiying didn’t go as we had hoped, with the car’s ECU plug coming loose on my first flying lap in the session.  The outside kerbing at the Wakefield park circuit is very savage, and violently rattles the cars lap after lap. In hindsight, this was the cause of our gearbox clip issue on Friday, and it got us again in Qually with the ECU plug disabling the car out on circuit. By the time the officials halted the session, and I got a tow back to pit lane and the boys found and fixed the issue, the session was basically over. I did get back out and get one lap in, which was good enough for 14th.

Had I been able to repeat our best lap from Friday, we would have been 6th…

With 2 heats and a pre-final to come, we had some work to do, but it wasn’t over by any means. Saturday’s first heat we started 7th, and the skies opened as the cars were assembling in the marshalling area ready to head out. On a greasy track, it was an action packed race!  Again, luck wasn’t with us as the car got caught in 3rd gear on the run to the first corner, dropping me from 6th back to 18th. In the damp conditions and with our full dry set-up bolted in, the car was a big handful but was able to climb back to 10th at the end.

Again, Luck wasn’t with us. We seem to have had a fair few doses of bad luck that has cruelled our weekends, and we have become the Excel racing champions of the comeback charge. When we are racing a car that uses a lot of standard components, that was moreso designed to ferry grandma to the hairdressers than race in a highly competitive environment, we are occasionally going to have little things go wrong as everyone in the field does. It is ok, it is a part of the game and we just need to keep working hard, checking and double checking and our luck will turn.

We spent a lot of time saturday afternoon and evening with car, checking over everything, developing workarounds for the gearbox and making set-up changes. We were the last team to leave the track Saturday night, and we certainly worked very hard to give ourselves the best chance for Sunday.

Sunday morning’s second heat was akin to a gang war. Everyone went crazy. Thankfully, we avoided the mayhem! Starting 11th, we were able to sneak up to 9th which was ok, and we didn’t get any hits or damage. (A lot of people did). The race was more about a result and keeping the car good for the important races to come.

Sunday lunchtime we were supposed to have a 14 lap pre-final, the results of which were to set the starting order for the 23 lap championship race Sunday afternoon. This race was our chance to climb up the field and get back a good starting position for the final. It was absolutely critical we do well in this race.

However, due to the mayhem from the heat races, the officials spent so long in stewards enquiries, hearings, and viewing evidence of incidents and deciding appropriate penalties that the prefinal had to be cancelled. I was ropable that it took national level officials so long to make decisions, and that really hurt our chances. In the end, no real penalties were handed out and the cars basically lined up as they should have… A lot of time wasted…But that is the umpires call and we have accept that.

So, we started the final in 19th place. In a field of cars so evenly matched on pace, and a track that is difficult to pass on, it was going to be a tough afternoon. As I said, we were able to work our way through to finish 10th. We were the first Series X3 Queensland car home, which was very pleasing.

The race went smoothly for us, we maximised our chances and I don’t think we could have done any better. 19th was simply just too far back. I had to drive flat out to try and make ground up, so my tactic of being conservative early then charging went out the window! It was full charge from the green light. I was able to work my way through, but by about 3/4 distance the engine temperature was getting very high – a by product of sitting in the “train” behind other cars and drawing in their heat. So I had to look after it in the final few laps and that blunted the charge slightly towards the end when I had missile lock on 8th and 9th.

All inall, I was very happy how the car performed in that race, it looked after it’s tyres noticably better than most of our opposition and didn’t miss a beat, and our goal of a top ten finish was achieved. Considering our learning curve, and that this is our 4th event, to be in the Top 10 excels in the country is a terrific achievement for our MTAI Apprentice crew. We are learning all the time and the improvement is noticable to everyone.

Looking back through the speed we had and if we had been drama free, I think our “best case” finish would have been around 4th or 5th. We still have a pinch more speed to find to be  winning, but we aren’t far away now and 5th compared to 10th isn’t really a big difference so I think we salvaged the weekend nicely and to make good on our pre-event goal is also very pleasing.

The young guys that set the pace in our local Queensland Excel series,  Cam Bartholomew and Brock Giblin, didn’t disgrace themselves either. Cam was the fastest all weekend, taking pole position by a significant margin, winning the shootout and setting fastest laps. His championship race ended early unfortunately with a broken hub from contact damage. Brock was a similar story, 4th fastest in Qualifying and very fast in the races, he too was on the wrong end of contact damage, breaking a CV joint and putting him out.

It shows how hard we have to work in Queensland just in win here – we are up against the fastest blokes in the country every time we race. We will be up against these 2 for our final Queensland Championship race at Morgan Park, Warwick in 2 weeks. I am looking forward to taking our improved MTAQ car back there and seeing if we can knock them off at a track that I thoroughly enjoy racing on.

Now to the highlight of the weekend – the team. We took a smaller MTAI crew to the event than usual, with Gerard and Elliott joining me. The boys did amazingly well. They are just superstars. I cannot ask any more of them, simply outstanding. Their infectious enthusiasm is very humbling and they worked so hard – The early starts, the late finishes, and how they keep their chins up when something goes wrong is just fantastic. Elliott had to fly back to Queensland Sunday night to continue his work experience at Red Bull Racing, so “Jerry” did the drive home with me –  13 hours straight!  Again, above and beyond. The MTAI has produced some terrific young men and I am beyond proud of them.

Again, none of this could be possible without the tremendous support of all of the association – so thank you again for believing in, and sharing the journey of the MTAQ Racing team. We have one more event for 2017, and I hope we can snag a much deserved trophy!